COD: Details On Canceled Live-Service Zombies Standalone Game Revealed

A former Call of Duty developer at Raven Software has spilled the beans on a cancelled project from 2011, which would have been a live-service game entirely focused on COD's popular Zombies mode. While the project was said to be in pre-production between 2011 and 2012, it was reportedly cancelled likely due to fear of competition with the main line games.

Former Raven developer Michael Gummelt appeared in an interview with COD YouTuber Glitching Queen, after the cancelled Zombies title was revealed through his LinkedIn page. Gummelt revealed that the project was codenamed Project Zed, and was intended to be a free-to-play game supported by microtransactions, inspired by Raven's experience with developing and supporting the China-only live service title Call of Duty Online.

Gummelt says that the project started when Zombies was handed off to Raven Software, due to Treyarch being unsure if it wanted to move forward with the mode. Gummelt explains that he was assigned lead designer on the project due to having prior experience designing Zombie modes for Call of Duty Online--even if they ended up being shipped as "Cyborgs" due to China's censorship laws.

Gummelt got as far as writing a design document for the game, outlining a four-player co-op title with a full world map. Players would have started as a gladiator in a Mad Max-style arena fighting zombies, later making their escape to explore the game's full post-apocalyptic world.

"It was kind of like Mad Max meets COD Zombies," Gummelt explains. Part of his design document for the project is revealed in the video, with one line calling it a "fun, campy, and experimental Zombie game."

Unfortunately for Zombies fans, the project was cancelled before the project could get into active development. While Gummelt says he never got an absolute answer on why, he got the impression that it was due to Treyarch wanting to use Zombies again without competition from a free-to-play Zombies title.

In the interview, Gummelt also talks about his experience working as a lead designer on Warzone, which was directly inspired by an early battle royale mode he developed for Call of Duty Online called BattleCity.

Back in 2015, former Zombies mode director Jason Blundell claimed a standalone Zombies title wouldn't work for the Call of Duty franchise, explaining that most players like the flexibility to choose from different modes in the game.